The Hirsch Effekt announce new album ‘Kollaps’

March 8, 2020 James Weaver

THE HIRSCH EFFEKT have announced a new album!

Titled Kollaps, the upcoming album from the German progressive metallers is their fifth studio album and is scheduled to be released in May this year, via Long Branch Records.

Speaking about the upcoming album, guitarist/vocalist Nils Wittrock says, “Kollaps – the Swedish equivalent to “collapse” – is the name of a book, which I stumbled upon while doing research on the album’s overall theme. In it, the author investigates why historical societies perish and designates conclusive factors, that could lead to a perishing of present-day societies. Remarkably, the man-made climate change ranks first, although the book saw the light of the day already fifteen years ago. As an example for an extinct, historical society, the inhabitants of the Easter Island also find mention in Kollaps. In line with this, the title track bears the same name. Together with the song Torka it tells its own, fictional story, that could have taken place at the mentioned site. For all titles on the album (except Allmende) we chose a term that either derived from the Swedish language or existed in it itself, hereby alluding to the famous, Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg.

With Kollaps we once again continued our cooperation with American artist Alejandro Chavetta, with whom we’ve worked already for the past 11 years. To us as a band it’s invaluable to receive such a unique artwork from album to album, that at the same time has become our corporate identity and indivisible from our semblance. Even if Alejandro‘s take on the cover of Kollaps turned out more colourful this time, it’s obvious at first sight that it’s a THE HIRSCH EFFEKT album. The elements and the executions are fitting to and in line with the album theme, in which the movement of young adults and kids are lyrically thematized. Besides from the skull, which has become a recurring element in Alejandro‘s works for the band, dangerous and wild animals can be spotted as well as Latin terms for life and death. In between them the upper body of a man has been drawn to attention in a way, although surrounded by menace, may still have the control over the direction he’s heading to.”

Alongside the announcement of the new album, THE HIRSCH EFFEKT have released a new music video for the first song to be taken from the upcoming album; titled Noja. Speaking about the new song, the band says, “Noja– equivalent to panic or fear – makes an allusion to our musical roots. Partially, the song pays reminiscence to the band THE FALL OF TROY. We actually even ended up dubbing some musical parts in the piece after their song names. The intro was firstly only an attempt to use a delay effect in a certain way, that musician Steven Wilson enthusiastically thematized in a rig rundown video on YouTube. Somehow this song suddenly came about from all of that. The rap part was originally performed by Nils in English and intended to be a spontaneous prank at a vocal session in our rehearsing space.”

Watch the official music video for Noja here: